REALLY inspiring IWC Synch with RADM Nancy Norton earlier today (yesterday for those in the States, I think). Watched it on youTube when I got home from work earlier. Lots of positive movement for the IWC. Looks like IWC will be looking to cross detail XOs between communities at the O5 command level. Believe this is a very positive step to begin developing growth between the communities sooner in the course of a standard career. Also, she mentioned looking at billets in our commands to determine where we can continue to increase diversity of all communities inside of IWC commands. Kudos to VADM Tighe and the IWC Flag Panel for these moves! Definitely progress in the right direction to enable the IWC to maximize its potential and continue on course to become greater than the sum of its parts! Looking ahead to the future, I'm admittedly a little envious of those folks who commission today.

Cross-detailing as a O-5 XO is a waste of time. I don't see how this will "maximize the IWC potential". How much exposure/experience will someone get in a 2 year tour doing XO heads/beds? Plus this will only be a small fraction of officers within the IW community. As someone with 20+ years in the CW community I hope to get Command/XO one day but would absolutely be crushed if it wasn't at a CW Command.

I hope someday you won't view the XO role as a waste of time. Don't you think the level of exposure is largely up to the individual? We'll all be crushed if we don't figure out what those commands do and how to best integrate. Staying in our own stovepipe of excellence is not an option to be relevant going forward.

Being an XO in my community isn't a waste of time as I'd deal with manning and other issues that deal specifically within my community that could benefit me further down the road. Spending 2 years at a METOC command will provide very little benefit for future CW tours and could actually hurt me because I'd be 2 years behind my peers in CW operational/leadership experience. I get the argument that leadership is leadership no matter what, but what's the real benefit in spending 2 of my 20+ years (or 15+ for non-prior enlisted) as XO in a different community? When will it actually benefit the Navy? It sounds good on paper but in reality it provides little benefit and I'm sure the majority of the officers across the IW would rather do away with these billets. That'd be an interesting survey to conduct.

I think the value in experiencing another community is that it exposes the individual to the other IWC communities. That exposure is crucial to building the knowledge required for the IWC to fully eventually realize its value to the Navy. I think the point of cross detailing is to bring benefit to (eventually) senior IWC leaders who must make decisions which extract maximum value from the IWC (all communities) for the Navy. If efforts (such as cross detailing) aren't made to bring the four communities closer together to produce combined value greater than the sum of their parts, there wouldn't be much point to the IWC.

Having been to METOC Commands in Mississippi, I can see tremendous value for a CWO, IP, or Intel officer in understanding 1800 missions and platforms, particularly those who would eventually go to OPNAV, C10F, or IFOR. The value for the Navy is defined by what those officers decide to do with that experience/knowledge in follow on tours; specifically in how they apply it. It's entirely up to the officer.

I guess we'll just agree to disagree. I'd like to think that after 20 years I can already provide crucial value to the Navy without needing to work in another community; working WITH other communities in an integrated operational environment is entirely different and provides more valuable expertise. Also you mention that the value is defined by what those officers decide to do with that experience, however there are very few opportunities to actually use what little experience someone has earned from X-Detailing. I'd be interested to see the data on how many officers with X-Detailing experience actually serve in a follow-on billet that would benefit from it. Based on how little our AQDs, previous experience, etc. is used to drive detailing my guess the # of billets would be very small.

I remember a few years ago when our community did away with the national security studies seats at NPS. At the time, the prevailing argument was we needed more seats in technical degrees and less in non-technical degrees because the idea of the IDC (now IWC) is we would lean on the strengths of the other communities rather than educate and train some officers broadly.

While perhaps not exactly the same, cross detailing at lower and lower ranks, in a way, flies in the face of the above argument. Both methods would give some exposure to alternative approaches to problem solving and the strengths/weaknesses of our IWC brethren, but in slightly different ways.

Frankly, I like the idea of opening up some cross detailing opportunities. I have to agree with Yoshi that the XO job lends itself well to getting some exposure to at least one of the other IWC specialties, but 20yearman has a point that the bang for the buck of doing so is still to be determined. Would a person with that cross detailing, broad experience be a better fit for a job like the new O-6 IWCs? On paper I would say yes. We all have a cognitive bias to want to stick to things we're familiar/comfortable with. I see it all the time coming from Navy J39/N39's who love to talk EW, CYBER and STO, but will shy away from the other IRCs because we often don't get much exposure to them. This kind of cross detailing experience lets you sit at a command that is probably closer to the operational level, so you have the benefit of seeing the work from that perspective (rather than from a strategic, CCMD level), and you get to broaden your understanding of what the other IWC orgs can bring to the fight.

Personally, I find cross-detailing silly. Deliberate cross-billeting is the answer. Don't send me to an 1800 billet just to expose me. Recode the billet to 1810 because you want an 1810 to bring his/her expertise and apply it to an IWC mission. At the very least, recode those billets that we believe any 18XX designator could do effectively to 1850.

That's a fair point. Recoding would identify the "why" which would instill purpose and cause a better understanding for where we should better integrate communities inside IWC commands. We'd very likely get more out of such an approach than out of a "dis-associated Intel/IP/CWO/METOC tour". Might also make it an easier process to manage.

yoshi wrote:That's a fair point. Recoding would identify the "why" which would instill purpose and cause a better understanding for where we should better integrate communities inside IWC commands. We'd very likely get more out of such an approach than out of a "dis-associated Intel/IP/CWO/METOC tour". Might also make it an easier process to manage.

This might be beyond the scope of this discussion, but I'd argue we need to go a step further and integrate the IWC into communities OUTSIDE IWC commands and outside the N2/N6. I understand why we tend to live in the N2/N6 realm (i.e. comfort with our comm/SI background), but our future is in the N3/J3, and we need to get relevant there before we'll ever emerge as a warfighting force multiplier. Operational planning immediately comes to mind. I had a very interesting discussion with our STRATCOM LNO (post-command O-5 SWO) who was very critical of the IWOs/CWOs he worked with on strike group staffs because we tended to not understand operational planning very well. We don't develop those skills by holing ourselves up in the 2 or 6 stovepipes of excellence.